Workers Solidarity Movement

This video was shot on the morning of the Apollo House injunction hearing at the High Court, 21st December.  As well as footage from outside the courts on our way there we had earlier visited the sites of other occupied buildings evicted in the last 20 months. We discovered all of them were still vacant and in most cases no visible work at all had been done on them.

Apollo house is a NAMA building occupied to provide emergency accommodation for homeless people.  35-40 people have been accommodated there over the last couple of nights.  As expected the judge granted the injunction, it will come into operation on January 11th.

We  visit 4 other occupations evicted after the same judge granted injunctions over the previous 20 months.  All four of those sites are currently vacant and in 3 cases no apparent work has been done.  At the largest, Grangegorman all the habitable structures have now been demolished, it had previously housed 30 people.

Irish law is completely weighted towards property holders and not at all towards peoples needs for housing

The evictions sites we visit in the video
Site 1: The Bolt, Dorset street
Site 2:  The Debtors Prison
Site 3: Grangegorman (the HSE houses)
Site 4: Grangegorman (‘squat city’)

We also mention but don’t visit The Barricade Inn which is also still vacant after a injunction was granted against the occupiers of that building.  More on all of these at www.wsm.ie/squat

WORDS: Andrew Flood (Follow Andrew on Twitter )